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You've likely heard about the "boys on the bus," subject of an iconic book about covering the 1972 presidential election. Flash forward to 2016, and it's time to meet a group Politico dubs the "women in the van." That would be the 18 female reporters representing national media outlets who are covering Hillary Clinton's campaign, an unprecedented number. The story, by female writer Hadas Gold, chalks it up to "a combination of more women doing political reporting in general, and many more being drawn to Clinton's potentially historic candidacy." And it's led to "an unusual atmosphere," writes Gold, "with a female candidate sparring with a nearly all-female corps of reporters."

The female-centric press corps has not resulted in more positive coverage, say both the campaign and outside observers. But Amy Chozick of the New York Times provides an illustration of the dynamic, recalling a moment when Clinton spotted her at one particularly chaotic news conference being crowded by two photographers. “At one point Clinton says, 'Oh we’ll go to her, she’s totally scrunched down there,’” Chozick says. “Maybe that was a moment of sympathizing, looking out and seeing how uncomfortable and filled in we were. ... It seemed sort of maternal." Click for the full story, which notes some of the journalists think Clinton picks female reporters for her sit-down interviews in a calculated attempt to appeal to women voters.

State Department Suddenly Discovers 1,300 Pages of Amb. Stevens’ Email Yesterday, one of Stevens’ cables from July 2012, found him pleading for decent security protection… a plea that fell on deaf ears in Hillary Clinton’s department. In the July 9, 2012 cable, Stevens reported that, “Overall security conditions continue to be unpredictable, with large numbers of armed groups and individuals not under control of the central government, and frequent clashes in Tripoli and other major population centers.” The cable said 13 security personnel would be the “minimum” needed for “transportation security and incident response capability.” But a congressional source said Patrick Kennedy, a deputy to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, turned down the request. The cable sent under Stevens’ electronic signature shows that he was advocating for additional security and warning that the set-up did not meet State Department standards, as conditions deteriorated in the run-up to the attack that killed Stevens and three other Americans. The terrorist-infested wasteland Clinton and Obama transformed Libya into was the scene of 243 security incidents in the year before Stevens’ murder on 9/11/12, fifty of them occurring in Libya… including a failed attempt to assassinate the British ambassador with a rocket-propelled grenade, a month before Stevens requested more protection. Instead, Hillary’s minions decided to reinforce the Tripoli airport, and left Stevens stuck with a security contractor that didn’t even have a valid license to operate in Benghazi, because the British corporate HQ had a nasty spat with its Libyan agency. For all the Democrat complaints about a “politicized” Republican committee, the simple, irrefutable fact is that we wouldn’t need such a committee if Obama, Clinton, and the rest of this Administration had been remotely honest about what happened in Benghazi. Wild fabrications were concocted to minimize the political damage to Obama’s re-election campaign, and then one cover-up after another was laid down to avoid admitting to any of it. Rep. Trey Gowdy’s questions are not the issue. The issue is that he still has to ask them, and almost three years later, relevant documents are still tricking out by recalcitrant political operatives in the State Dept.